


future perfect

by andnowforyaya



Category: GOT7, Girl's Day (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Office, Domestic, Established Relationship, Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Puppies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2287466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark is not perfect; Mark is a perfectionist. The difference is important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	future perfect

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this because I wanted to write domestic!Markjin with a dog. I don't understand what happened.

“No,” Jinyoung says with the sternest face he can possibly manage, which is not very. It doesn’t help that he’s got a streak of white on his nose from some intense sunscreen usage, cheeks red and shiny lips sticky from the drinks they’d had on the boardwalk. They’ve had a good day at the beach, and Jinyoung just can’t quite do _stern_ right now.

Mark pouts, and makes his eyes big and dark and a little watery. This face has a 95% success rate. It works on his dad, and Jaebum, and Jackson (even if usually when he tries this with Jackson, it’s accompanied by a playful tap on the ass). With Jinyoung this face has like a 60% success rate; ever since they moved in together, Jinyoung’s slowly grown immune to it.

Mark sidles up to him, warm hands around his waist, just to make him squirm.

“But,” Mark begins haltingly, trying to get the words right in his head first before speaking them. “Puppy! Don’t you want one, too? I know you want one. You’re always squealing whenever we go jogging in the morning and we see Bobo. What if we had our own Bobo? Huh?”

“No, that’s _you_ ,” Jinyoung says. “And Bobo seems nice because he’s _not ours_. Mark, we can’t take care of a puppy; we can barely take care of ourselves!”

Bobo the Bulldog goes for a walk with his owner, Hyeri the Coffee Shop Girl, every morning at 6:45 AM, before her shift. This also happens to be the time when Mark drags Jinyoung out of bed to exercise. Jinyoung says _exercise_ like it’s a dirty word, but he always comes along for the run. At about 7:02 AM, Bobo and Mark cross paths, and Jinyoung spends the next five-to-fifteen minutes talking to Hyeri about world affairs (mostly about how early it is and how morning people confuse the fuck out of him and yet he managed to shack up with one) while Mark squats down and makes faces at Bobo, who mostly pants and grins at the stupid human trying to amuse him.

They’ve just spent seven whole minutes with some stranger’s dog at the beach. Jinyoung played with the dog -- Apple -- for a little while but ultimately went over to talk to the owner and probably to apologize for his boyfriend stealing his tiny puppy, while Mark promised the dog treats and walks and rolled around in the sand with it.

“I can take care of myself,” Mark says with his lower lip jutting out, just as he trips over a raised edge in the sidewalk.

Jinyoung straightens him, looking very put upon. “Besides, I’m starting school again soon, and you’re starting your job. There won’t be anyone home for a new puppy.”

His boyfriend makes a good point. This, however, does not mean Mark has to like it.

“What if we adopt?” Mark says eagerly, voice rising with the excitement of the idea. “We could adopt a shelter dog, like an older one, and then it’d be--”

“Isn’t that worse?” Jinyoung says. They’re walking back to the train station together. The sun is just beginning to set on the last real day of their summer, and there’s a nice breeze in the air with the hint of Autumn. Jinyoung shifts the big duffel they’d brought out with them full of beach supplies and Mark takes it from him without a word. This stuff’s heavy. Jinyoung is peeling from sunburn and delicate. Mark grins at him.

“Isn’t that worse if we get a shelter dog and then -- what -- ignore it? That’s cruel.”

Mark deflates. The duffel suddenly seems much heavier as they enter the train station and out of the natural light. “You’re right,” he agrees sullenly.

“Maybe next year,” Jinyoung says in an attempt to lighten the mood, but Mark is busy thinking about their puppy-less year and how many puppy-less hours that will be. He only talks to Bobo five-to-fifteen minutes a day. That’s less than 100 hours a year. The future is bleak.

Mark hugs the duffel bag to his chest as they find two seats next to each other on the train, feeling like a rain cloud is hovering over him.

.

Mark’s job is like 2 hours of sorting paperclips into piles by color, 3 hours of looking at puppy pictures on the internet, a 30 min lunch, 1 hour of actual work, and then 1 to 2 hours of texting with Jinyoung about what they’re going to have for dinner.

Whatever. He told his dad he was searching for himself, which is _kind of_ what he is doing. Mark is fine spending a year as an overqualified assistant to some big wig in a big office while he sorts out his life priorities, maybe. It's what Jaebum did before some light bulb went off and he and Jackson decided to go backpacking across Europe for most of the summer.

Mark is waiting for his light bulb, that moment of clarity.

The problem is that Mark's just really _good_ at everything. Like, it’s an actual problem. He knows he could just as easily succeed in business as he could in the medical field. He could be setting all these big goals and dreams but then he’d have to go about _striving_ for them, which is more energy than he’s willing to expend and more disappointment than he’s willing to bear if he falls short. His teachers and professors all said the same thing as he was growing up: “You’ve got so much potential, but no drive.” The only thing that could hold his attention for more than 10 minutes was his Rubik’s Cube and the fluffy dog down the street from where he lived.

Not like Jinyoung.

Jinyoung is a goal-achieving machine. Jinyoung sees a target and aims for it and _reaches_ it, blasts through the barriers and lands a bulls-eye. They probably wouldn’t have ever started dating if Jinyoung hadn’t set his sights on Mark. Sure, Mark had flirted, but Mark flirted with everyone. Cast a wide net, you know?

Jinyoung sat him down and was basically like, “You need some direction in your life,” and no one had ever sat him down with that exact phrase and that tone and that promise: “And I’m going to provide it.”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so dramatic as that, but Mark is a daydreamer, and it’s the dramatic things he remembers -- the parts of his life he’d pick out to be in a movie. He remembers Jinyoung taking him out and showing him all around Seoul, the non-touristy parts. Holding hands on bridges. Noraebang until the sun rose. Corn on pizza and Italian pasta that was more like soup. It wasn’t _direction_ Jinyoung provided, necessarily.

It’s cheesy thinking about it, but Mark supposes he’s always been a little cheesy. Jinyoung made him put down his puzzles. Mark had spent much of his life with his head ducked, eyes down, following the rules, passing his classes and not ruffling any feathers. Jinyoung asked Mark to look up instead, but in the end he couldn’t really look past Jinyoung.

.

“Go to sleep.”

Mark senses more than sees Jinyoung roll over on their shared bed, bringing the covers back with him and throwing his leg over Mark’s middle as the glare from his phone throws shadows across his face. Mark’s glasses are at the tip of his nose precariously balanced, so that he can actually make out the screen in front of him at this angle.

“I’m almost done,” Mark whispers. The sudoku puzzle taunts him, half-full. It’s his third puzzle of the night.

“It’s like two o’clock, Mark,” Jinyoung mumbles with his face pressed into Mark’s shoulder, words slurred with sleep. “Just put it away. It’ll still be there in the morning.”

“I’m almost _finished_.” Usually the small light of his phone doesn’t bother Jinyoung, but for some reason it’s woken him tonight. Mark feels sorry, but then he’s just about got this. A 2 here, a 4 there. Rearranging some of the numbers. He solves the puzzle with a whispered _yes_ to himself as Jinyoung groans his displeasure against his skin.

“Sleep,” Jinyoung mumbles again.

“Okay, okay,” Mark says, putting his phone away and folding his glasses neatly onto the side table. He slides down a bit on the pillow until Jinyoung can pillow his head on his chest. “Sorry.” He drops a light kiss on top of his head.

He’s trying to turn off his brain. He needs to sleep or he’s going to feel it tomorrow, but finds it’s not so easy without the distraction of his puzzles. He’s not sure how long he lays there, stroking his fingers through Jinyoung’s hair and listening for the steadiness of his snores, thinking about everything and nothing.

Tomorrow he’ll go to work and plug through his duties, like a drone, and the next day, and the next. It’s all supposed to build to something. He has so much _potential_ , right? And he’s taking a moment, a long moment, to figure out just where he wants to direct it, but once he gets to work, all he can see is how the paperclips don’t match up in size and how the paint is chipping off the walls and how everyone is sitting there hunched at their desks, slurping cup ramen or shooting back coffee, and it’s just -- taking a lot of energy, especially when he stays up half the night doing puzzles.

But then he comes home and feels restless, too, after spending a day doing nothing. And then all that restlessness goes into his games, and then it all starts over the next day.

He should be directing that restlessness into thinking about his future, what he wants to do, where he wants to go.

He _should_ be, but he’s not. It sounds exhausting, even more exhausting than the routine he goes through every day.

Jinyoung grumbles against him, shifting so that he’s heavy across Mark’s chest, his weight pressing him down into the mattress. “I can hear you thinking.”

“Sorry,” Mark whispers.

“You’ve been having trouble sleeping,” Jinyoung says.

It’s not a big deal. This happens. When he’d been applying for colleges back in high school he spent half a year battling bouts of insomnia before deciding he would study abroad in South Korea. Things just keep him up at night: college applications, planning a surprise for his best friend’s birthday, job searching, coffee orders, calling his parents to tell them he would need another year, his future.

“Yeah,” Mark says, because it’s no use not admitting to it. Jinyoung, after all, is the one who gets his own sleep interrupted because of Mark’s tossing and turning.

“Are you stressed out about something?”

Mark makes a noise that doesn’t really mean anything, and Jinyoung rubs his side, a broad stroke of his hand over his ribs, in response.

“You want to talk about it?”

“You’re tired,” Mark says. “So you should sleep.”

“I can talk about it if you want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mark says.

Jinyoung’s hand stops on its downward trajectory, and Mark knows that he’s frowning. “Okay, but if you ever do,” Jinyoung says.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m sorry I kept you up.” Mark curls onto his side so he can hold Jinyoung the way he wants, arms secure around his shoulders and chin tucked in.

“Mm,” Jinyoung hums, already drifting again.

.

"Aren't you done with that yet?"

Youngjae is one of the interns at the firm. He's got the kind of face that gets cuter the more you look at it, and a voice like ice cream in the summer, but right now it really grates on Mark's last nerve.

It's just -- he's been trying to press all the right buttons to make this giant machine submit to his will for the last ten minutes but to no avail. The copier _won't staple the packets in booklet form_ and Mark's about to have an aneurism.

"No," Mark barks, and Youngjae startles a bit, nearly losing the grip on his coffee from the shop across the street. "I can't get it to do the packets right."

"Mind if I...?" Youngjae offers, voice trailing uncertainly. Mark stands aside with a sweep of his hand.

Youngjae taps the side of the machine, presses a few buttons, checks the paper feed trays, presses a few more buttons, and then gives it a hefty kick to its base that Mark would definitely never ever consider doing. It spits out a packet, perfectly bound and stapled and starts on the next, beautifully collated. "Ta-da!" Youngjae announces with a broad grin.

Mark could have done that. If someone had told him all the copier needed was a good kick, he could have done that. Youngjae looks so pleased with himself, still grinning, waiting. "Thanks," Mark manages.

If it's a little weak, Youngjae doesn't seem to notice.

"It's funny," Youngjae says, putting the sheet of paper in his hand into the feed as well. "All the machines are supposed to be the same but they're not. They're all better at different things. This one is crap at complicated copies but never fails a fax, unlike the one on the second floor. I don't think I've ever successfully faxed anything from that one, before."

"Okay," Mark says, unsure what Youngjae’s trying to get at or why he keeps smiling at him like that. Does he want to share his impressive knowledge of the building’s copy machines? Does he want a treat?

Mark still hasn’t decided whether or not Youngjae’s the real deal. There’s no way a person can be so happy delivering coffee and then spending the majority of the day in the inner closet alphabetizing things. Actually, Mark probably wouldn’t mind spending most of his day away from the public eye putting things in order and getting paid for it -- oh, except Youngjae isn’t getting paid for it. He’s getting school credit, though, which is about the same thing.

But the coffee bit? Mark imagines trying to keep everyone’s orders straight, guessing orders for people when certain items have run out, substituting cream or milk or getting a double versus a triple -- what a nightmare. So many chances to get them wrong.

Mark supposes that the highlight of Youngjae’s day is probably getting coffee in the morning though. That’s when Hyeri works. And she has a soft spot for things with slightly squashed-in faces in a cute way.

Mark tilts his head. Youngjae kind of reminds him of Bobo, now that he’s thinking about it.

“Hyung?”

This is something that Youngjae has taken to calling him. Being a hyung means more than being just a big brother. It’s being a mentor and role model. There are expectations. Mark has never quite managed to grasp when the timing on that switch -- from formal names to _hyung_ \-- is supposed to happen. Jinyoung insists it’s when the younger person feels comfortable enough to do so. Still, Mark kind of wishes there had been an official Hyung-Calling announcement, so he could prepare himself adequately for the way Youngjae approaches him and just seems to _expect_ something out of him.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. You were just looking at me funny.”

“Oh,” Mark says, thinking it’s probably not appropriate to tell Youngjae he’d been comparing him to the cute bulldog he smothers with kisses every morning. “I was just thinking you must be bored in that closet-office all the time,” Mark says quickly.

“They let me out sometimes. And it’s not that bad. I like it for what it is, and I get to graduate a semester early for it.”

That’s Youngjae, ever the optimist.

“Don’t you wish you’d gone for a different internship? Like, one that was fancier with a better title and stuff?”

“Nah,” Youngjae says. “I like it here. The people are nice. My boss is nice. I like getting coffee at Hyeri-noona’s shop. And I’m getting the same experience I would be getting somewhere else, somewhere meaner, probably. I’d rather be happy at a mediocre firm than miserable at a huge one. Wouldn’t you?”

“Eh,” Mark says, not able to commit, because that’s a lot to think about.

“Oh, my fax went through,” Youngjae announces, humming a little as he presses a few more buttons on the machine. It’s still steadily making its way through all of Mark’s copies. “I’ll see you later, hyung. You coming out with us tonight?”

“Probably not.” It’s Jinyoung’s night to cook, and Mark can’t wait to see what kind of disaster is waiting for him in the kitchen.

Youngjae smiles at him anyway. “One day, we’re getting you to come out with us.”

“We’ll see.”

Mark smiles back. The machine finishes making his copies. They’re all perfect.

.

The coffee shop across the street is clean, mostly square, and caters to the clientele of the block: businesspeople and their assistants, CEOs and their secretaries. The line should never be more than 5 people deep, because everything needs to move quickly. The counters are wiped down every two hours to keep the place spotless, and you have to buy something to get the passcode to the bathroom, if you want to use it.

Hyeri seems to be oddly placed behind the counter. Not because she doesn’t look the part -- she’s beautiful and slim, with long limbs and doll-like eyes and a sharp diamond cut to her chin to die for -- but because she doesn’t blend into the background when she opens her mouth. Her laugh is loud and bordering on obnoxious, and she has no patience for rudeness or insensitivity. Everyone either loves or hates Hyeri, and even those who hate her love her on the sly.

Mark loves her. Even before he knew she owned a bulldog named Bobo, when he’d been in college, she was The Coffee Shop girl who always gave him an extra pump of caramel in his latte before serving, who told him his face would get stuck like that if all he ever did was mope around complaining about his coursework and switching majors, who chased him down with wind-milling limbs when he forgot to bring with him a napkin he’d been scribbling on at the table when he left.

In all the time he’s known her and visited the shop, though, he’s never seen Bobo there with her.

“My manager says he’s just not allowed behind the counter,” Hyeri tells Mark as she fixes up his order, giving him one extra pump of caramel before sliding it over to him. “But anyone who has a pet knows -- I mean, do you keep your dog out of the kitchen at home? No. So, what’s the big deal?”

“Well--”

“Don’t tell me about health code violations. Bobo is the cleanest dog in the whole world. He’s just slow. And kind of slobbery.”

The shop is a bit dead at the moment. Hyeri steps out from behind the counter and walks them over to a table in the corner, and Bobo trails after her on waddling legs.

“Not that I don’t love Bobo,” Mark says, “but why’d you bring him out today?”

Hyeri sighs, leaning back in her seat. Mark resists the urge to squat down onto the floor to scratch under her bulldog’s chin. He makes do with smiling at him and waving and tilting his head when Bobo tilts his head as he waits on her answer.

“I have to take him to the vet after my shift,” Hyeri explains. “Poor baby’s getting old.”

“Poor baby,” Mark coos, giving up on his resistance and setting his coffee down to slide off his seat to get face-level with the dog. He scratches under his chin, behind his ears, and finally just sits down with his legs crossed to pull Bobo into his lap. Bobo pants onto his cheek, soaking up the attention happily. “How long have you had him?”

“Going on eight years, dude.”

“And how long have you been a coffee shop girl?”

Mark looks up from playing with Bobo’s paws when Hyeri doesn’t answer. His eyes meet hers, and she lifts her eyebrows at him. “Coffee shop girl?”

“I mean,” Mark says. “You work at a coffee shop.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a coffee shop girl. I take orders and I make coffee. I do other things, too. What are you? Office Cubicle Boy?”

Mark thinks about it for a moment, and then he says, “Yeah.”

Bobo whines and Hyeri frowns. “No, you’re not. You’re Mark.”

“Well, yeah, obviously. But. I’m an office boy.”

“But you’re Mark first, and office boy second,” Hyeri insists, hands starting to wave around her face like that will make her point come across clearer. “Or office boy third, or last. But Mark is Mark. Am I making sense?”

“No,” Mark says, thinking about his Rubik’s Cube back at his apartment.

Hyeri says, “I’m not always going to be a coffee shop girl, but I’m always going to be Hyeri -- get it?”

“You’re on some higher plane right now and the wavelengths aren’t connecting,” Mark tells her, flashing a smile. Truthfully, he kind of gets what she’s saying, but the thing is: Hyeri’s perfect, as is, while Mark’s got a whole lot of room for improvement.

.

It rains on Sunday.

Rain always puts him in a funny mood. It makes him think about home; weird, because it almost never rains in LA. Still, the patter of a light shower against his living room window leaves him thinking about his family and how long it’s been since he’s seen them.

It’s been ages, and it’s no hardship to admit that he misses them.

It’s difficult talking to them when he’s got little to nothing to update them about -- his life is pretty stable right now. He’s got a job, he’s got an apartment, and he’s got Jinyoung. Nothing too exciting. But, he thinks, shouldn’t there be something exciting? Shouldn’t there be something in the works, some next thing?

His dad expects him to be successful, eventually. “You can take your time getting there, as long as you get there,” he always says, but the more Mark thinks about it, the more he’s starting to realize he doesn’t even know where ‘there’ is.

“I think it’s a good day for soup,” Jinyoung says from the kitchen. “Soup and _Running Man_. What do you think?”

“Sure,” Mark says, toying with the Rubik’s Cube in his hands. The puzzle isn’t really much of a puzzle once you know the algorithm. A friend taught it to him once, back when he was a kid, and he never forgot it. You have to know your way around the cube in order to finish it up, but that’s easy, too, after multiple successes with it.

Mark likes the little buzz of success that runs through him when he solves the Cube. He likes that he knows he will be able to solve it.

Today, though, he keeps losing his place. The patterns keep getting mixed up. Does he twist the bottom now, or the front panel? Were the centers matched up before he started? Did he just make the daisy or the cross? Mark scratches his head, and then he puts the Cube aside and turns on their television.

“You’re not going to finish it?” Jinyoung asks, coming to sit with him on the couch. They squeeze together even though there’s so much room. Jinyoung puts his head on Mark’s shoulder.

“I lost my place,” Mark says.

After a couple of minutes, the soup Jinyoung is heating up on the stove starts to boil over, and Jinyoung rushes over to contain it.

.

It rains on Monday, too.

The alarm goes off on his phone and Mark rolls over in bed to shut it off before pulling the covers over his head. A moment later, the mattress dips, and Jinyoung’s hand comes to rest somewhere in the vicinity of his hip.

“Time to get up,” Jinyoung says with a hum. “You’re always the one asking me to run.”

“It’s raining,” Mark mumbles from under the covers.

“That’s never stopped you before.” Jinyoung tugs at the covers but Mark holds them fast against his face. “Bobo will miss you.”

“Bobo probably won’t be out in the rain. Hyeri said he’s getting old. It would be bad for his arthritis.”

Jinyoung sighs. “Are you just going to stay in bed today, then?”

Mark fakes a weak cough as Jinyoung rubs his hand up and down his side. “I’m sick,” he says.

“You’re not,” Jinyoung says. “But I won’t tell.”

Next follows the press of Jinyoung’s lips against the covers where he thinks Mark’s forehead is. He’s close enough. He pats Mark on the butt, and Mark shifts again to bring his face out from underneath the warm comforter. Jinyoung comes back to kiss him on the forehead for real, a smooth press of skin against skin.

“Don’t stay in bed all day, okay?”

“Okay.”

.

He doesn’t intend to fall back asleep, but his bed is warm and comfortable and there’s the soundtrack of rain against the walls and windows. All that is interrupted when his buzzer sounds, loud and abrasive in the peaceful setting, followed by excessive knocking at the front door.

Mark grumbles and worms his way under the covers some more, but the knocking doesn’t stop. Reluctantly, he crawls out of bed and ambles out of his room to the front door, where he can see Hyeri banging away impatiently through the peephole.

Mark opens the door and immediately a lump of fur squeezes past his legs and into his apartment, and then Hyeri says, “If you’re staying in today, can you look after Bobo? He’s lonely.”

“I,” Mark says, more a noise of surprise than the start to a sentence, realizing belatedly that he’s in a singlet and boxers and little else. He blushes and turns to look back at the dog, who has already prostrated himself on the floor of his living room, peering back at Mark with huge eyes.

“Bobo,” Hyeri sing-songs, “Mama will be back after work! You be good for Mark-hyung, okay?” She whispers, “Don’t worry -- he mostly just sits around and looks for things to eat. I tried leaving the apartment today and he just kept whining. It was so sad. And I was all set to go when I ran into your boyfriend who said you were whining, too, so I thought, maybe--”

“Jinyoung said I was whining?”

“Well,” Hyeri says, pausing and pursing her lips. “Not in so many words. But that was definitely implied. What are you whining about anyway?”

When Mark hesitates, Hyeri tilts her head at him, leaning her elbow against the door jamb.

“Work?” she asks.

Bobo growls.

“That’s a possibility,” Mark says. He steps back and crosses his arms, but Hyeri doesn’t enter.

She says, “Jinyoung says you guys want to adopt.”

Mark’s eyes widen at her.

“A dog, I mean. Not a kid. I mean, if you want to adopt a kid, I’m sure you’d both be great parents. But I’m talking about a dog. Puppy.”

“Yeah, but Jinyoung also says the timing isn’t right.” Mark pouts, and Hyeri mimics the way he’s got his arms crossed. “I work and he has school. No one will be home to take care of a puppy, so--”

“So quit,” Hyeri says.

“What?”

“What? You don’t even like it there. What are you doing there in the first place?”

Mark spits out the answer he’s always provided for a question like that, the words feeling rote and empty. “It’s like a step in the rung, right? It’s just -- a way for me to get the experience I need before moving on to something better.”

“And what’s that going to be,” Hyeri asks with a downtown in her lips.

“I...don’t know,” Mark admits.

“So can’t you do the not-knowing somewhere else? Somewhere fun? Somewhere that won’t suck the soul out of you?”

Mark says nothing. Hyeri is glowing in her own righteous wisdom, and Mark is a little blindsided by her glare.

“Listen,” she says, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “I’ve known you for a while. You’re a cute kid, a good guy. You’ve probably had a lot of people say you’re going to go far, without anyone actually telling you where to _go_. Am I right? So take a moment. Step back from everything. Think about life. Get a dog. Kiss your boyfriend. Work on those puzzles you’re always working on. Figure out what you want to do.”

The passion burns out of her pores. Mark says, “Have you done this before?”

Hyeri shrugs. “I spent a month in India at a yoga retreat. I have a certificate in Mindful Reflection.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You’re not supposed to. You’re just supposed to let me be your guide, okay?”

“What would you get out of this?”

Hyeri sighs. “Nothing. Fulfilment. I don’t know. I mean, also there’s a shift opening up at the cafe because Sojin is moving to Canada, and _personally_ I think you’d be great at the shop.”

“I can’t just quit,” Mark says, going back to the start of the conversation.

Hyeri blinks at him. “Yes, you can.”

Behind him, Bobo whines at the lack of attention, and Hyeri peeks past Mark’s shoulder to give her dog a huge smile. “Ah, I’m going to be late. I have to run. But seriously, Mark. What’s the point in staying unhappy?”

After Hyeri leaves, Bobo falls asleep on top of him on the couch sometime around 1pm and Mark doesn’t feel any sort of grand desire to move, so he lets him be and watches television like that, spread out on his back with Bobo on his belly, thinking about what Hyeri told him. He texts Jackson on and off as Bobo snores and grunts. Sometimes his hind legs twitch but that is calmed quickly when Mark scratches behind his ears.

 _if u quit come teach english wit me marrrrrk_ , Jackson sends him. The buzz of his phone makes Bobo’s ears shake, but he stays dozing.

“Should I quit?” Mark asks Bobo like it’s a secret being whispered to him.

Bobo doesn’t answer, but he opens an eye that gleams at him before shutting it again.

.

“Double shot medium mocha latte, 2 pumps of mint. Go!”

Hyeri times him, watching the numbers tick by on her phone as she stands a safe distance away from possible spills and splatters. Mark cranks the levers and shakes the milk and pumps the mint and sets a double shot medium mocha latte, 2 pumps of mint, on the counter by her not two minutes later, and she grins at him.

“I think you’re totally ready to open with me tomorrow,” she says.

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah. You’ll be my right-hand man. My first mate. My backseat driver.”

“I don’t think that means what you think it means.”

“Hush,” Hyeri snaps, throwing a packaged straw at him. It bounces off his chest, harmless. “Do _you_ think you’re ready to open tomorrow?”

Mark considers it. He put in his two-weeks-notice at the firm well over a month ago now, and has been working the slow late-afternoon shift at the coffee shop ever since, with Hyeri and another barista, Mina, supervising.

When he’d first told Jinyoung about his plan to quit, Jinyoung had been upset, and rightly so. Mark probably shouldn’t have led with, “I really want to get a dog. Also, I think I’m going to quit my job.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re quitting _so that you can get a dog._ We talked about this, Mark.”

Jinyoung had stayed upset for about 3 seconds, because that was when Mark said, “No, I’m quitting because I’m just -- not happy there,” looking down at his knees until Jinyoung had closed to the distance between them to hold him against his chest on the couch.

“Well,” Jinyoung had said. “That’s different, then.”

Working in the coffee shop is not hard. Well, there are certainly _moments_ where working at the shop is hard -- dealing with annoying customers or running out of milk at the last moment and needing to restock -- but the pace of it suits him, and he likes hanging out with Hyeri and Mina and Bobo, and he likes making coffee and serving food, and he likes seeing that little smile on someone’s face appear when they take their first sip or bite of it, satisfied.

Working part-time at the shop might not be making him as much as he had been while working at the firm, but it’s given him a lot more freedom. He’s not wiped out when he gets home, and it’s been a while since he’s wanted to pick up his puzzles as a distraction. It’s given him time to think about what he wants to do and try new things, just like Hyeri said it would.

“Yeah, I think I’m ready,” Mark says, grinning.

.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [writing](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)


End file.
